Liberal Party President is asking the same key H1N1 questions as myself:

Questions being asked by President of the Liberal Party, Alf Apps, in a letter today.


GSK, a UK-based maker of the H1N1 vaccine, is the one and ONLY supplier for Canada. Why? Who made that decision? On what basis? In the US, there are five different suppliers. Shouldn't we have understood that we are putting the health and safety of Canadians at risk by putting all our eggs in one basket?

Who made the late decision to change the vaccine for pregnant women, and therefore disrupt the production schedule, which inevitably impacted the availability for ALL Canadians?


Questions posed by myself this morning:

Nor is it wise to run a heath problem of pandemic proportions by single sourcing your vaccine from one supplier. How dumb and reckless is that, to put all your eggs in one basket, with no alternative source of vaccine? Having multiple sources for mission critical supplies like vaccines is Supply Management 101. Meanwhile who approved and instructed Canada’s sole supplier to stop the production of vaccine with adjuvant in order to produce vaccine without adjuvant, in the belief that only pregnant women can safely take the latter and not the former (contrary to what the World Health Association is saying), and resulting in today’s real time delay in the manufacture of much needed vaccines of the adjuvant type? Was that a call made by a politician and made on purely political grounds? What studies and trials on pregnant women taking this vaccine exist to support such a decision, or was this decision completely knee jerk? Was this decision made knowing and truly understanding the effects such a decision would have on vaccine production at Canada’s sole source supplier? Or was that a call made by US authorities, who I understand are being supplied with non-adjuvant vaccine by Canada’s sole source supplier, and Canada’s supply of vaccine is being whipsawed and prioritized by by decisions made south of the border, where the US has no less than 5 suppliers of vaccine, and yet we have but one (GlaxoSmithKline), who answers to two masters, perhaps one more than the other?

HINI stands for Harper Won the confidence of No One.

An inspirational leader Stephen Harper is not. In fact, it’s a stretch to even consider Harper a leader at all, unless of course you consider being able to carry a tune to be the true mark of leadership. In that case perhaps, Canada should elect Michael Buble as our next Prime Minister, or perhaps Paul Anka?

No, true leadership is something that only emerges in difficult situations, or not, as the case may be. On that score. Stephen Harper has shown a complete lack of leadership. Look at his handling and response to the Chalk River nuclear leak that endangered many, many Canadians’ lives and their health. His reaction was to fire the Head of Canada’s nuclear regulatory body. Linda Keen, and for what? For doing her job. Harper’s solution to that potentially enormous public safety issue was to attempt to manipulate and brow beat Linda Keen into lowering her standards and looking the other way. This is how catastrophes start and reveals the same reckless regard for rules and regulations that brought Wall Street crashing to the ground. In the Chalk River episode, it was Linda Keen who showed leadership by standing up for her principles and for doing the job she was entrusted to do on behalf of the public she serves and had the conviction and fortitude to stand up to the tyrant, Stephen Harper. Harper won the confidence of no one. Linda Keen did.

Harper’s heavy-handed and cavalier handling of the Chalk River matter should have given all Canadians pause about Harper’s attitudinal approach to handling of the H1N1 outbreak. A course of incompetent conduct, such that the acronym H1N1 should also stand for Harper Won the confidence of No One. Indeed, look around you and all that there is to survey. Harper has won the confidence of no one, unless of course you are the patient of a private health clinic in Toronto, in which case you have nothing to be concerned about, regardless of whether you fall in a high risk category or not. This is not the way to run a public health problem of pandemic proportions, with haphazard delivery of vaccines with no concept of the medical priorities involved.

Nor is it wise to run a heath problem of pandemic proportions by single sourcing your vaccine from one supplier. How dumb and reckless is that, to put all your eggs in one basket, with no alternative source of vaccine? Having multiple sources for mission critical supplies like vaccines is Supply Management 101. But then what does Harper know about the real world, or any of his Members of Cabinet for that matter? Meanwhile who approved and instructed Canada’s sole supplier to stop the production of vaccine with adjuvant in order to produce vaccine without adjuvant, in the belief that only pregnant women can safely take the latter and not the former (contrary to what the World Health Association is saying), and resulting in today’s real time delay in the manufacture of much needed vaccines of the adjuvant type? Was that a call made by a politician and made on purely political grounds? What studies and trials on pregnant women taking this vaccine exist to support such a decision, or was this decision completely knee jerk? The Miracle on the Hudson, this is not. Was this decision made knowing and truly understanding the effects such a decision would have on vaccine production at Canada’s sole source supplier? Or was that a call made by US authorities, who I understand are being supplied with non-adjuvant vaccine by Canada’s sole source supplier, and Canada’s supply of vaccine is being whipsawed and prioritized by by decisions made south of the border, where the US has no less than 5 suppliers of vaccine, and yet we have but one (GlaxoSmithKline), who answers to two masters, perhaps one more than the other?

Meanwhile what comfort is it for Canadians to know, as they are now being falsely reassured, that everyone who wants it, will have access to a vaccination by December? Do these people in Ottawa making these assurances, not have an understanding of the incubation period of a flu virus in the general population? December? The H1N1 strain has been active all summer and experience, efficacy and prudence says the vaccine should have been administered in August to allow the 10-21 days for maximum immunity before the cool weather and flu season set in. It is now potentially too late for many Canadians and certainly sub optimal, as evidenced by the peaks of infection already reaching some areas of the country.

The bottom line is that H1N1 stands for Harper Won the confidence of No One. As if we needed the H1N1 outbreak to make that point about Harper failing to instill confidence in Canadians through his words and actions, and often false reassurances, too numerous to mention.

Those of us who were lied to by Harper about his income trust promise and were then subsequently lied to by Harper about his tax leakage ruse, were forewarned about Harper’s capacity to lie and mislead and to act in a completely cavalier manner without regard to the consequences to Canadians. Unfortunately, that excludes 99% of the people in the media were willing to accept these lies of Harper’s on face value with no push-back or professional inquiry whatsoever, resulting in another viral infection that has gone completely untreated and essentially undiagnosed in this country called M1N1, acronym for the Media has Won the confidence of No One.

Meanwhile, we are left with the pandemic of Harper’s own creation, which is the ongoing foreign takeovers of vulnerable income trusts, like last weeks $4 billion takeover of Harvest Energy Trust by state owned Korea National Oil Company. Gone will be the $908 million taxes collected in the last five years from income trust investors who owned Harvest Energy Trust, replaced by the goose egg in taxes to be paid by Korea’s state oil company. There is the tax leakage that Harper spoke about..... The $7.5 billion in annual taxes that will be lost from his income trust policy as all these trust get taken over by non-taxable entities using non-taxable structures....the tax leakage pandemic one of Harper’s own incompetent and deceitful creation.

Mr. H1N1 strikes again, as Harper Won the confidence of No One.

H1N1: "The words ‘colossal ineptitude’ come to mind," said Phil Carson

Aglukkaq admits 'disappointment' in vaccine production


By Keith Bonnell,
Canwest News Service
November 1, 2009 5:47 PM


After a faltering start to Canada’s mass immunization program, federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq admitted Sunday she’s been disappointed by production problems with this country’s H1N1 vaccine.

But the minister said there were benefits to having GlaxoSmithKline Inc. producing the bulk of Canada’s vaccine domestically.

She also said it’s essential that those Canadians who are at a higher risk of contracting H1N1 go out and get immunized, despite the long waits many of them have faced at clinics around the country.

“In a pandemic, everything is happening all at once, and it is a challenge,” the minister told Canwest News Service on Sunday as the nation entered its second week of the immunization program.

“I’m disappointed,” she said when asked about GlaxoSmithKline’s production delays. “GSK overstated what they would be able to produce.”

Health officials learned last week they would have only 400,000 doses to ship out this week and another 225,000 doses reserved for pregnant women — far short of the six million that have been distributed thus far.

Officials said the manufacturer has fallen behind because it had to make a special unadjuvanted vaccine for pregnant women. The World Health Organization said last week pregnant women can safely be immunized with either of the licensed swine flu vaccines.

The vaccine offered to most Canadians contains an adjuvant, a substance added to the vaccine to make it more effective, but there was initially some uncertainty about its suitability for pregnant women.

GlaxoSmithKline has since switched its one production line back to making the regular vaccine, but officials said it will take some time to ramp up to the target of producing three million doses per week.

“It was important to be able to produce unadjuvanted vaccine,” Aglukkaq said Sunday.

She stressed that having the company produce the vaccine in Canada — it has been made at a plant in Sainte-Foy, Que. — had avoided problems that could have arisen had the vaccine been manufactured abroad, such as meeting the production regulations of a foreign country.

The first week of the vaccination efforts saw provinces and territories struggle to meet the demand as worried Canadians lined up for hours to get vaccine for themselves and for their children.

Ontario, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Saskatchewan say plans to open clinics to the general public are on hold, while they focus on those most at risk — pregnant women, people under 65 with chronic health conditions, children between six months and five years old, people living in remote communities and health-care workers.

Alberta initially offered the vaccine to all its citizens, rather than just those in the high-risk groups, as many provinces did.

The plan seemed to backfire, with clinics unable to keep up, leading the province to shut all its vaccination clinics over the weekend.

It plans to restart vaccinations this week, but only for high-risk groups.

On Sunday, residents in Edmonton and Calgary showed up at clinics anyway, some of them unaware vaccination efforts had been temporarily shut down.

"The words ‘colossal ineptitude’ come to mind," said Phil Carson, as he arrived at one closed clinic. "It’s just bad planning."

“It’s not good," added Anna Luca, who said she saw the news Saturday night but decided to try the clinics at the former Children’s Hospital in case it was open. "Everybody’s panicking."

Meanwhile, Ottawa’s medical officer of health, said he has hired more temporary nurses and redeployed “every available vaccinator we have found in the city.”

“In order to vaccinate more people, our clinics need more trained professionals to work as vaccinators,” Dr. Isra Levy said in a memo to city staff issued on Saturday.

“We have also put out a call for trained personnel to work as vaccinators — a call that many have answered.”

As a result, the city’s six clinics have been vaccinating between 4,200 and 8,550 people a day.

The health minister said Sunday the vaccine was delivered earlier than expected, adding that the delivery of the vaccine was the responsibility of the provinces and territories.

“In the last three weeks, we’ve produced over six million (doses),” Aglukkaq said.

“We were early in getting the vaccines to the provinces and territories,” she said.

“The provincial governments and territorial governments deliver health care,” she said. “How they roll that out . . . that’s their jurisdiction.”

Aglukkaq echoed the pleas of provincial health ministers across the country that only those considered at a higher risk to contract the virus attend clinics.

“If you’re most at risk, you should be at the front of the line,” she said.

Meanwhile, Newfoundland and Labrador recorded its first swine flu-related death, health officials said Sunday.

A 36-year-old woman from central Newfoundland passed away Saturday from complications of an H1N1 infection. The local health authority said the woman had an underlying medical condition.

This would be the 96th confirmed H1N1-related death in Canada.

With files from the Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen and the St. John’s Telegram
© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Knock, knock, knocking on the Liberal's door: Flaherty's trick still no treat. Anybody home?

Flaherty's trick still no treat

William Hanley, Financial Post Published: Saturday, October 31, 2009

The timing was impeccable. Three years ago today, on the spookiest Halloween ever for investors, Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, knocked on our collective door and yelled: "Trick or trick." The Harper government's stunning about-face on the taxing of income trusts, a staple investment for 2.5 million Canadians, many of them retirees, was like finding a razor blade in the apple.

Three years on, the announcement still rankles deeply with all those investors who saw the value of their portfolios sink by double digits within a few days, future income flows choked off. And while many executives and other observers supported the move, it is still viewed by many as a complete betrayal by a party that had vowed to protect income trusts, especially now when pricing yield out of low-risk investments is a near-impossible trick and absolutely no treat.

An income trust holds income-producing assets, with the income passed on to investors through monthly or quarterly distributions, which typically are higher than stock dividends and give cash yields of up to 10% a year -- higher for riskier trusts.

Before that fateful Halloween of 2006, investors had enjoyed these hefty payouts from the income trusts, which came into being in 1985, but really caught the public's fancy in the new millennium. Top money managers such as Ira Gluskin of Gluskin Sheff had championed the trusts, which provided clients with great income streams and good underlying capital gains --a magical win-win story.

The beginning of the end for income trusts actually started on Sept. 5, 2005, when the Department of Finance under the Liberals said the trusts had cost Canadian governments hundreds of millions of dollars in lost taxes the preceding year. Too many companies were contemplating the trust route.

On Sept. 19, the department suspended advance tax rulings on future trusts, thereby hurting investor confidence and wiping $9-billion off the trusts' market capitalization. The Liberals later recanted and said the advance rulings would continue. But the trust issue was on the table and under the microscope.

Flaherty's stunning Halloween announcement the following year was basically the nail in the coffin. By 2011, even those trusts formed before the announcement will be subject to the new tax rules.

The Finance Minister did increase the tax credit for those over 65 by $1,000 and introduced new rules to allow senior couples to split pension income to reduce the income tax they pay.

That, though, was seen as a mere sop compared with the income and capital gains provided by the trusts.

Meanwhile, the three years since that infamous Halloween have turned out to be difficult for investors, with the past 18 months especially tough for retirees and those Baby Boomers hoping to retire in the next few years as the stock market crashed and fixed-income returns withered away.

Their current plight is put into stark focus by the Canada Savings Bond campaign that offers investors all of 0.4% interest for the one-year bond. To save all the trouble, the saver may as well park the money in the proverbial mattress.

Along the same line, this week I got a call from my bank informing me that I was such a good customer that I was being offered a special deal on a new kind of account available to only us special clients. I could get an annual quarter per cent on a balance up to $5,000 and -- sharp intake of breath--half a point on anything over that.

I asked if this was some kind of pre-Halloween trick-or-treat prank. The caller replied no, obviously not seeing the irony in this "special" offer.

For history buffs, there is a certain ironic arc between Jim Flaherty's Halloween massacre and today's square-root-of-squat interest rates courtesy of the Bank of Canada (Mark Carney, the Bank's Governor, was widely credited with being the architect of the income-trust strategy when he was at Finance in 2006, the man who designed the policy that led to that infamous about-face.)

Of course, Carney was doing the bidding of his political masters in the Harper government. And today, though he is ostensibly independent of politics, he is charged with steering the right path to economic recovery.

Part of that recovery depends on persuading consumers to spend on SUVs and flat-screen TVs with ultra-low credit rates, and to get buyers into homes with mortgage rates so low they will only be repeated in another financial crisis.

Unfortunately, there are winners and losers in all matters financial. We, the aging savers, are the losers in this equation, just as income-trust investors were in Flaherty's Halloween flip-flop. The winners -- for now -- are the borrowers being treated to the low, low rates provided by us lenders, who will either grimace and bear it or find better returns in riskier investments just as the stock market takes on a spooky tone.

New study reveals income trusts expand the “efficient frontier” of capital markets

This new comprehensive academic study (email CAITIinfo@rogers.com for a copy) comes to the same conclusion that Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge had reached, albeit in a more comprehensive way, when David Dodge stated at a press conference on October 19 , 2006 (i.e. before he was muzzled by Flaherty) that: "The work we have done in terms of capital markets per se is that probably, on balance, income trusts make capital markets somewhat more complete and somewhat more efficient.”

So why would the Minister of Finance want to make Canada’s capital markets less efficient by destroying income trusts, unless of course the purpose of doing so was to allow those who were exploiting the market’s inefficiency to continue to reap these unjust rewards inherent in an inefficient market?

Much like the market was inefficient when stocks were traded in eighths and quarters, thereby allowing a few hundred traders to extract huge unearned profits, but was made efficient for all participants when stocks were traded in cents. Was the move to stocks quoted in cents rather than eighths and quarters something that Flaherty would have opposed? So why is Flaherty acting as an agent for narrow interests to kill income trusts using the false premise of tax leakage? The role of the Minister of Finance is not to perpetuate market inefficiencies, so a handful of powerful persons can reap extraordinary gains at the expense of the broad populace. Or maybe it is?

This new study is entitled: “A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TAX EXEMPT FLOWTHROUGH VEHICLES: THE RISK ADJUSTED PERFORMANCE OF INCOME TRUSTS, MLPs AND REITs”

This study has several important findings that indicate the intent of Flaherty’s income trust tax was to destroy the emergence of a new and distinct asset class (premised on the falsehood of tax leakage) and in so doing reduce the efficiency and effectiveness of the Canadian capital markets, as indicated by the following quotes from the attached study:

On creating more efficient markets, this from page 112:

“As it may be seen by figure 2.24. above, stock of flow-though investment vehicles significantly expand the efficient set when added to the mix over the period of January 1999 to July 2007. The exstimation window is chosen as to minimize the
effects of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008”

On the distinct nature of income trusts as a unique investment “asset class”, this from page 113:

“Overall, our evidence would suggest that flow-through stocks comprise a distinct asset class from bonds and equities. In the meantime, using co-integration analysis, we document varying levels of stock and bond cointegration, which suggest
the risk-return profile of flow-through stocks may in fact be replicated by a combination of bonds and equities. Still, there remains a large enough portion of flow-through stock variability not accounted for by common market risk factors to
justify the diversification benefits of Income trusts, MLPs and REITs”

Why are pension funds like OMERs CPP, PSP. Caisse, Teachers’ etc. exempt from Flaherty’s 31.5% tax, whereas RRSPs are not, given this finding on page 114?

“To the extent that stocks of flow-through investment vehicles are considered as an alternative class, our results would be of interest to investors and portfolio managers alike.”

Boor that he is, Harper makes "crude remark" at launch of Canada's Olympics

Harper must confuse being at the launch of the Olympics with being in the locker room with the boys, although when has Harper ever been in the locker room with the boys, the total non-athlete that he is?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper identifies a key flaw with the Olympic red mittens


By Jonathan Fowlie, Vancouver SunOctober 29, 2009


Prime Minister Stephen Harper (left) and Premier Gordon Campbell show off the Olympic Torch and the red 2010 Olympic mittens in the premier's office at the legislature in Victoria on Thursday.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper (left) and Premier Gordon Campbell show off the Olympic Torch and the red 2010 Olympic mittens in the premier's office at the legislature in Victoria on Thursday.
Photograph by: Debra Brash, Times Colonist

VICTORIA — In a brief photo opportunity, Premier Gordon Campbell and Prime Minister Stephen Harper had an amusing, but curious exchange on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters assembled in his Victoria office, Campbell held his thumbs up while wearing the red Vancouver 2010 Olympic mittens.

"I like the thumbs up," Campbell said, with Harper at his side holding an Olympic torch.

"You can't put anything up but the thumb," replied Harper.

"He can't give you the finger in those things," he added, chuckling at the reporters in the room.

After an awkward pause, a surprised Campbell looked back and responded: "I've never experienced that."

jfowlie@vancouversun.com
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

10 billion reasons why the insurance industry’s advice on pension reform should be ignored

Jonathan Chevreau of the Financial Post writes today about the “10 billion reasons why Manulife and insurance companies like the status quo” in terms of Canada’s retirement system, 10 billion being the amount of variable rate annuity product, Income Plus, that Manulife has been successful in selling and which was launched simultaneously at the time of the income trust market’s demise, as lobbied for by the very life insurance industry who would benefit (funny that?).

I would argue that Canadians have 10 billion reasons why Manulife and the insurance industry lobby group’s advice should be derided and scorned rather than heeded. The insurance industry lobby group would have us believe that all is well with the ongoing proliferation of this kind of synthetic, derivative based form of retirement savings product, like Income Plus. The President of the insurance industry lobby group writes “"Canada's life insurers already offer guaranteed income products that allow individuals to securely shift from asset accumulation into the retirement payout phase.", as if to infer that is a good thing.

What is good about a product issued by life insurance company’s that is not even being properly hedged? Unless we are masochists by nature, why in the world would Canadian policies favour the issuance of more product, namely guaranteed income products, that experst in the indsurty like Warren Buffett consider to be “crazy” in terms of the risks that these products entail for both the insurance companies and those who buy them? ( see http://ifawebnews.com/2009/05/07/buffett-says-life-insurers-took-%E2%80%98crazy%E2%80%99-risks-on-variable-annuities/)

Meanwhile we have a perfect example here in Canada about the risks that were foretold by Warren Buffett, which almost led to the collapse of insurance giant Manulife via these very products and their inherent risks. Why would we take advice from Manulife or the insurance indsutry lobby group on the question of pension security, in the face of this kind of reckless and wanton fallout?

Manulife served with OSC notice

CFO retirement 'unrelated'

John Greenwood And Barbara Shecter,
Financial Post
Saturday, June 20, 2009

Manulife Financial Corp. has received an enforcement notice from the Ontario Securities Commission related to its disclosure of risks associated with its variable annuity guarantees and segregated fund products.

The notice, which arrived this week, indicates a "preliminary conclusion" by OSC staff that Manulife failed to properly disclose before March the potential impact its investment product guarantees would have in the event that equity markets declined, the company said in a statement released after markets closed yesterday.

Meanwhile, Manulife announced the departure of Peter Rubenovitch, its long-time chief financial officer and right-hand man of former chief executive Dominic D'Alessandro. The company said the two issues were unrelated.

As a result of guarantees on its investment products , Manulife took losses that were so significant its capital levels were affected.

Manulife shares have declined 43% from their peak in December 2007.

Manulife, which believes it satisfied disclosure requirements related to its investment products, said it has the opportunity to respond to the notice before OSC staff come to a decision on whether to commence proceedings.

Toronto-based Manulife enjoyed a spectacular rise during much of the current decade but got into trouble in the financial crisis when it had to make good on guarantees it made on investment products.

Bay Street began asking questions about Manulife's risk-taking and failure to hedge its variable annuity products late last year, just after the giant insurer had to obtain a $3-billion, five-year loan from the major Canadian banks to bolster its capital reserves.

In a conference call to discuss Manulife's financial results, a senior analyst asked, "Why didn't you start to hedge once you went through your tolerance level at 15%?"

According to the Insurance Journal, Mr. D'Allesandro responded: "We didn't expect the volatility in the markets that actually transpired.... We clearly did not appreciate that markets would fall quite as sharply as they did, and expose us to the level of potential risk that they have."